I have been on vacation and look forward to being back worshiping with you this Sunday. Today we are blessed to have a guest writer for “Words from the Rector”, Steven Woodcock.
Steven is a good friend and a parishioner of Mariners’ Church of Detroit. He has spent the past ten years serving as a Chaplain for a local Detroit health system and is a seminarian working towards a Master of Theology with a specialization in Anglican theology. He is husband to Haley, his wife of nine years this November.
Please enjoy Steven’s insightful words about St. James the Apostle.
Blessings and peace,
Rev. Todd
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Feast Day of Saint James the Apostle
One of the many treasures of Anglican spirituality is the liturgical life of the Church throughout the year and our participation in those various seasons we encounter therein, as outlined in The Book of Common Prayer. Simply put, the liturgical life and Calendar of the Church is the life of Christ and his Body, ordered to prayer with their related Scripture readings, Psalms, Collects, and prayers. The yearly cycle, with its appointed colors signifying both the time and the mood, provides the Church with an immersive participation in the mysteries and promises of God revealed in Scripture and fulfilled in Our Lord. We allow time itself to be ordered according to his life so that we may “evermore dwell in him,” as we pray every Holy Communion.
The Church invites us to enter into this sacred pattern of ordered prayer daily in Morning and Evening Prayer and every Sunday as we celebrate the Holy Communion. We then find our lives liturgically shaped and spiritually sustained by the rhythm of these means of grace. Currently, we find ourselves amidst Trinitytide, which is the season after Trinity Sunday, also known as Ordinary Time. As Father Todd has reminded us, this is a precious season for growth, hence the lovely hue of green adorning the Altar, along with the vestments of our clergy, signifying the continued cultivation of the Faith we have received as branches grafted to the true Vine, bearing choice heavenly fruits.
This Saturday, July 25th, is the Feast Day of St. James the Apostle, and for this week’s Words From The Rector, we will briefly reflect on the life of St. James with Christ. He and his brother, St. John, are the sons of Zebedee. Christ named the pair the “Sons of Thunder” (Mark 3:17). James is one of the earliest of the Twelve to be called, along with St. Andrew and St. Peter (Mark 1:16-18). It is St. James, along with St. Peter and St. John, who are invited into an intimate relationship with Jesus and witnessed some of the most mysterious moments in the Gospels, including the raising of Jairus’ daughter (Luke 8:49-56), the Transfiguration (Mark 9:2-3), and the agony in the Garden of Gethsemane on the night in which he was betrayed (Matthew 26:36-38). When the sons of Zebedee left their nets and family to follow the Messiah, little did they know the blessed journey of faith they were to embark on.
This course led the Apostle to follow Our Lord across the Galilean and Judean countrysides, towns, and cities, from the seashores and mountaintops to all the places in between. Church tradition informs us that St. James, after the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, brought the Gospel as far as Spain and other territories, teaching, baptizing, and celebrating the Eucharist before returning to Jerusalem, ultimately meeting his martyrdom. In fact, James was the first Apostle to be martyred, as the Epistle lesson (Acts 11:27-30; 12:1-3) recounts and the assigned Gospel lesson (Matthew 20:20-28) foreshadows.
Yet, why celebrate the life of a saint at all? To remember the saints is to rejoice in the activity of God in and through them. It is an invitation to celebrate the Body of Christ, into which we have been baptized and of which we are members, and to learn what it means to belong to the Body of Our Lord.
With our liturgical and sacramental life shaped by the life of Christ and his Body—and with that Body, according to our liturgy and Creed, being the “Communion of Saints”—we can see why the Anglican tradition holds these feast days as sacred. These wonderful saints are people like you and me, whom God chose as vessels of his love, and by his grace, they faithfully cooperated with him for his most blessed purposes.
If this is so, then we too as members of the mystical Body of Christ, may, by God’s grace, join Our Lord in the mission of his holy Gospel. We too can live the life of a saint. This holy participation in the life of God is lived out daily by obediently following Jesus Christ and the continued nourishment by his Word and Sacraments, which graciously enable us to grow in his likeness. The Collect for St. James articulates this thought eloquently:
GRANT, O merciful God, that, as thine holy Apostle Saint James, leaving his father and all that he had, without delay was obedient unto the calling of thy Son Jesus Christ, and followed him; so we, forsaking all worldly and carnal affections, may be evermore ready to follow thy holy commandments; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
(Book of Common Prayer, 1928)
May the Collect take deep root within the soil of our souls that we “forsaking all worldly and carnal affections, may be evermore ready to follow” Our Lord to the places he leads us, to love and serve God and neighbor, and by his grace we shall. St. James demonstrates for us a vision of a life of faithful obedience and participation in life of God. He enjoyed an intimate fellowship with Christ, and we too, as members of his Body are invited into close communion with the Lord. As Jesus spoke to the Apostle, he speaks to us now in the Word of God. We are lathered in the language of heaven as his sheep blessed with the sweet voice of the Shepherd. St. James was welcomed to ascend the mountain to see the Transfigured Lord; we also are welcomed to ascend the steps of the Altar Rail every Holy Communion to meet with Christ. Let us then join St. James “without delay” unto the calling of Christ and the life that he has prepared for us to walk in. Amen.